Every once in a while, I’ll see a notation made in “This Day in History” about Attila the Hun invading someplace. I never see any mention of him doing much else besides conquering and pillaging. Today it said: 452— Italy invaded by Attila the Hun. No tennis trophies, or Nobel prizes. No. He simply liked to plunder and ransack.
Attila must have been some kind of a guy, I’ll tell you. I always have this picture of him in my mind as a horrible, fierce, barbaric man. Killing everyone he met. Even the guy at the lunch counter, who just handed him a burger with the works. Attila said “no cheese” and he meant it.
He was, of course, the leader of the ancient nomadic people called the Huns. This is always a little ambiguous to me. Who were the Huns? I need to see them on a map. He is called the ruler of the Hunnic Empire, which he established. I need that on a map, too. So I looked and tried to figure that it went from Western Russian, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, into the Eastern Regions of Austria, Germany, and into other places, eventually Italy.
Hun, Sweet Hun.
He swept across lands with his armies, overpowering other countries, making them his own. Attila’s attacks into the regions of Germania drove the populations across the borders of the Western Roman Empire. He was a major contributor to the decline of that Roman Empire in the late 5th century CE. What goes up, must come down.
He had power and was a world-class fighter. Attila was a brilliant horseman & military leader. Apparently, he had a very strong personality, and he kept his empire together by asserting that power. But, I’m wondering just how he got that way. I mean, at some point, he had to be a baby Hun, with a Hun for a Mom. Little Atty probably had a rattle and sucked his little Hun thumb. When did it all change?
I think it happened when someone gave him that fur hat for his 12th birthday. I don’t think I’m spitballing here. All the reconstruction portraits show him wearing the fur hat. Historians aren’t telling us something, there.
He had an uncanny ability to command a vast army of warriors (often comprised of different tribes). Like the Alans, Alemanni, and Ostrogoths. Whoever they were. This was in contrast to Roman generals of his time. Those guys, the Romans, had difficulty keeping their non-Roman troops under control. So yes. Our Attila guy made the Huns the most effective fighting force of the time. They were so effective that he built a vast empire from virtually nothing in less than ten years. At its peak, this empire stretched wide. All the way from central Asia across to modern-day France and down through the Danube Valley. On a map.
After he died in 453 CE, his sons tried to hold his empire together but failed, and it broke apart by 469 CE. (He was about 45 years old when he died.)
So I felt the need to write about Attila today, because this June 8th, back in 452, he put a whooping on Italy. But what I’m wondering about Attila is — could he leave his work, at work? I mean, at the end of the day, did he go back to his tent and have a little orchard garden out back? Or did he like to bake in the evenings? Say, those little cupcakes with sprinkles on top? Maybe that’s how he swayed his armies. He knitted little wooly scarves for them.
It seems the more history lessons we explore, the more there is to wonder. So it goes with all of life. The world is filled with wonder. It is even filled with some modern-day Attila’s. Lessons we should learn.
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History is who we are and why we are the way we are. — David McCullough
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A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. — Mahatma Gandhi
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History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. — Kurt Vonnegut
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